I Told You So
by Faith360
Summary: It was a queer thing to look back and realize just how much Zevran had done for her. He'd done more than just warm her bed - of course, he'd done that too. Zev/Tabris/Alistair oneshot.


**While playing my Zevran-romancing character, Alistair decided to try and hit on me, and this just kind of came out. I thought it was kind of funny. I don't like creating new Wardens for a oneshot when Bioware has good enough names already, but she didn't seem like an Elissa, Kallian, Lyna, Solana, Neria, or even a Sereda or Natia, so she is now a Rhylan. Ta-da. Have fun :)**

* * *

><p>It was clear to everyone the way Alistair and Rhylan felt about each other. They all had different measures - Zevran and Oghren had the lewdest theories, of course - but everyone knew.<p>

Alistair Theirin and Rhylan Tabris absolutely _loathed _each other.

She would march off angrily to the tent she shared with Zevran – her blatant disregard for safety and morality angering her fellow warden further – and could be heard ranting into all hours of the morning.

There came a point when she began to grow...crankier (if that was even possible). She still stuck to Zevran like glue (partly out of spite) but the elf, subtly, began to change his treatment of her. It was disguised in the old way of flirting and bawdy jokes, but Alistair noticed he didn't...touch her. He would softly calm her anger, or direct it somewhere else, and they couldn't be heard carrying on all night anymore. The assassin had something up his sleeve, and Alistair was determined to find out, before that idiot elf got herself killed.

Zevran refused to indulge, but Alistair began to get the impression that the rest of the party was in on it.

Oghren and Zevran joked often, sure, but lately they quieted whenever he or Rhylan approached. Leliana was usually giggling frantically by their side, but now she sat across the fire, quiet, a smile waiting to break out across her face. Wynne would pat the girl on the shoulder, hiding her own smile. Morrigan seemed to have found the subject at least slightly amusing, and even Sten at least listened to their conversation. The _dog_ would stop wagging his tail and stare at the interrupting party, be it Alistair or his master.

_Something _was going on, and Alistair was going to find out what.

They had been told - many times, and in many ways - to just _try_. Naturally, she refused.

Finally, though, Rhylan lost it. _Zevran _had lost it. He now refused to sleep with her, or even touch her or kiss her, insisting that the charade had gone on long enough. "I was...indulging you, my dear. I hoped that if you got what you thought you wanted, you might come to realize it was not, in fact, what you wanted."

She screamed at him. A lot. But he continued calmly, no matter what she said.

"I want you to have what you want, mi Querida. You are a dear friend, and I cannot say I haven't enjoyed our time together, but I know this is not what you want."

She stormed away, of course. Who was he to know what she wanted?

Surely, if she'd wanted him, she'd be crying instead of yelling. She'd have tried to take him back instead of screaming.

But she had yelled and screamed, and then she ran.

Finally, _finally_, she found _him _in the darkness, in one of those starlit places she hated, where the silence of the wilderness pressed in and the sounds of the natural world were peaceful, the crickets chirping and the grass soft, the brook rushing quietly over rocks.

She hated such deceptive places, where everything was perfect, and she ultimately refused to camp there, lest she suddenly find herself in Zevran's tent in the middle of such a so called 'romantic' place.

But this was where she truly let herself go. She had never understood Alistair's so called morality when it came to women, not until he refused her. Not until everything was perfect, except the two of them, perfectly imperfect, and, confused and driven by some deeper sense of fire and passion that was unfamiliar to her. New. Consuming.

Obviously, the man she'd come across in that all too peaceful glade felt it to, because for all their anger, Alistair and Rhylan found themselves at the mercy of a force they'd been fighting for a very long time.

She had never been rejected. Not until _him_. She felt like she would burst, or just fall over and die.

That feeling – that sense of loss that held her frozen, arms poised as if she was still kissing him – was what changed her.

She felt as if her very soul had turned to liquid at his touch, and at his retreat, at his words of 'no' and 'never'. It was melting down and out, gushing like blood from a wound, outside of herself, and she couldn't bring it back, couldn't hold on to it.

Alistair made what he would have previously called a mistake and turned around. He saw her, the way she stood, the way her hands, stuck in midair where his face had been, shook, the way that shaking began to spread to the rest of her body.

He took several giant strides across the grass and caught her before she fell.

Her nails dug into his shirt, into his skin, her forehead rested against his chest as her sobs mixed with a growl he knew so well. Oh, she hated him, and it was obvious, but for the first time he realized she needed him, too. Needed the one who kept her back, who told her what to do, even when she didn't want to hear it.

She was practically on her knees. He wrapped his fingers firmly around her elbows and lifted her to his level, despite her struggles. And unlike before, when somehow their lips had found each other of their own accord, he acted of his own will. He kissed her, and he kissed her with every harsh word and every heated argument behind him. But more importantly, him, who preached his morality, kissed her with every moment of restraint and love from a distance he had ever felt in his life.

Slowly, she began to regain her senses, as if his touch could restore the world. As if at his kiss, his _approval_, she thrived again. Wynne had been hinting when she said Rhylan longed for his approval, but what she really wanted was his love. Rhylan wanted to earn Alistair's love, and she had worked so hard to get it, without even realizing what she was working for.

This time, she turned away. She turned her face away, turned her lips away from his, and, with great heartbreak, gave up something precious, a precious thing that somehow she had found after years of loss, all for him. "No."

He didn't feel like making a comment about how _she_ of all people was saying _no_. She had loved so many in her time, and he none at all. Pure. _Whole_.

She felt...broken. Like he had everything to give, and she found herself truly in love, only to have already given everything away.

He kissed her crown, hands moving from her elbows to surround her waist, keeping her close as his lips drew near her ear. "Yes,"

She shook her head, feeling the oddest sensation thst something was in her eyes.

He rested his forehead against the side of her head, this touch gentle and inviting. "Rhylan,"

He managed to find a way to kiss her lips one more time, erasing every feeling of loss. Everything else didn't matter. It was gone. It had happened, but she was still here.

She would forever feel like she could never offer him what he had offered her, but when the queen granted them permission to marry, when Rhylan - in an out of character romantic gesture - tracked down the very spot where he first kissed her, that perfect place where she turned him down became the place they gave in.

When those who knew what she had gone through found out she was getting married to a human - the king's bastard, no less - rumors began to spread that she had lost her mind.

She thought she had. She kept thinking that on the journey, but when she arrived...when _they_ arrived, the silence from their trip continued, and in that silence...magic.

When she woke up to see his face, the word 'husband' didn't sound so bad at all. Friend, lover, husband...stubborn, strong, sarcastic, caring, smarter than he let on _Alistair_.

Sometimes she still wondered if she _had _lost her mind, when she spoke of her husband - a literal human bastard - with a smile she couldn't contain and a constant warmth inside her that refused to do anything but grow stronger.

That did not mean she refrained from slapping Zevran when he spoke the infernal words, "I told you so,"

As she stormed off, Zevran winked at Alistair, and with that as his parting, he boarded a ship to Antiva.

Alistair knew Rhylan would miss him, later. As he watched the ship become smaller and smaller, carrying the elf away forever, Alistair felt regret - not just for Zevran, but for the other members of their party, scattered to the winds, who had all, also, told him so.

Zevran's intentions - which he had refused to give when Alistair demanded to know - had been clear the whole time. He had been helping Rhylan.

Alistair heard reports - and angry letters from Rhylan - about the situation in Amaranthine. Weisshaupt was not everything he'd wanted, it was far too boring, and he found himself longing for a campfire in the middle of nowhere with familiar voices chatting around it, Rhylan across the fire glaring at him.

A fellow warden snapped her fingers in front of Alistair's face. "Alistair! Snap out of it, we have more paperwork to fill out for Commander Tabris."

Alistair shook his head to clear it. "Sorry, Jaina, my mind was wandering."

She shook her head exasperation. "How far did it wander, exactly?"

"Antiva."


End file.
